Democrats have been in denial so deep and for so long it borders on the insane when it comes to the mood of the country on more government growth (and debt). The Debt Limit was the first major hurdle for the new GOP led House to begin an intervention for those spend-mad Democrats in DC. Up until this weekend the Dems were still making ridiculous and reckless demands for more tax increases in any debt limit resolution. A clear sign Democrats had not gotten the message of 2010.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, pitched his colleagues on a plan to raise the borrowing limit by about $1 trillion and match that with similar sized spending cuts — enough to last through the rest of the year, and leaving for later the heavy lifting on taxes and bigger spending items.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he is working on a plan to raise the debt limit by $2.7 trillion, coupled with an equal reduction in projected future spending. In a concession to Republicans, he said that plan would not include tax increases, but that the new debt level would last through the 2012 elections.

Well, now that we at least have the Senate finally aimed in the right direction, we can work on setting the right pace of reigning in government. Reid can no longer hold out for tax increases. But pretend or out-year cuts are not going to be sufficient either. Now that they have finally buckled, it is time to get some real cuts and in some of Obama’s supposedly marked off areas. And they are nuts if we are putting their election needs above our economic needs. Any demand to help them get through elections is going to be rejected – and will be a legitimate firing offense come November, 2012.

My guess is the polls are really beginning to dive on them, like this one at Gallup where Obama’s approval rating is now well under water with 42-49 rating among ‘adults’. Lord knows what the ‘voter’ and ‘likely voter’ numbers look like.

According to the poll, the president’s 45 percent approval rating is down three points from June. Fifty-four [54] percent of people questioned disapprove of how Obama’s handling his duties, up six points from last month.

Note the switch between numbers and spelling. That is an old trick to diminish the comparison, to blunt the effect (which is why I added back in the numbers). But it cannot hide the reality of the size of the backlash building out there.

Rasmussen’s numbers have been opening up into wider negative territory as well.

People are fed up. As I noted over the weekend, the Dems had their time at the pubic trough and now they are going on a serious, financial diet.

Reids “cuts” are smoke and mirrors factoring in the savings from the Iraq, Afghanistan troop withdrawls.
These numbers are not included in budget expeditures when spent, I don’t believe, thus should not be counted when they decline. Even if I am wrong on that the military expeditures are NOT what is driving this runaway deficit, it is entitlments and new Obama programs like Obamacare and the utter failure of stimulus payoffs to Union cronies who funnel some of that back to re-election campaigns.
The Rats will never get real on those areas so the only choice is to replace them enmass.

The problem doesn’t seem so much to me that they “had their spending spree and muffed it” is much as they “made a knee-jerk ‘emergency’ spending spike and want to use it as a ‘baseline’ from which cuts are made”.

So they shoved through some 2 trillion dollars in budgeting, then continued them for another budget cycle by passing “continuing resolutions” rather than actually making another budget, then propose something like 2 trillion in “cuts” which does nothing but bring the spending back to where it was immediately before the stimulus packages.

What they need to do is take spending back to at least 2005 levels.

Use the budget from immediately before all the idiotic spending increases and use that as the baseline from which you cut. Cutting “emergency” spending isn’t really making a cut, it is simply returning to “business as usual”.